Omens Connected With the Right and Left Sides

Many of the superstitious beliefs and omens of the Maori are connected with the right and left sides, and the following illustrations will give the reader a fair knowledge of such beliefs. When an expert was performing the tohi taua rite over an armed party about to lift the war trail, he tapped each man on the right shoulder with a branchlet of karamu (Coprosma) that had been dipped in water. For the right side of man, says the Maori, is the tamatane side, it represents his mana tapu and vigour; it is the strength of the right shoulder that drives the weapon home. While the tapu of the war god was on a warrior, that is while on active service, he would always carry his weapon in his right hand, never in his left, for the left side is much inferior to the right, it is the taha noa or common side, void of tapu, it is the tamawahine or female side, also styled the taha ruahine; the right side is the taha ora, representing strength, welfare, etc., while the left side is the taha mate and stands for weakness, misfortunes, and death.

When a person feels a prickling or twitching sensation in his right nostril, then whatever he may be thinking of at that moment will never come to pass, but if felt in the left nostril it will come true. This peculiar feeling is described by the term makuru or whakamakuru. (Kite whakamakuru te ihu o te tangata.) Tamaki and Tangi seem to carry the same meaning. To hear the cry of the pihere or robin on the right hand side is viewed as a lucky omen, while on the left side it betokens ill luck. The same thing is said of the tieke bird or saddle-back by the Tuhoe folk. (Ka tangi te tieke i te taha katau o te huarahi he marie, i te taha puhore he puhore.) Puhore means "luckless", if you are going fowling or fishing, and hear that bird to your left then you will have no luck.

When about to tattoo a tapu person the first act of the operator was to strike his instrument into the left shoulder, although no design was marked on that part of a man. (ka paoa te whi tuatahi ki te pakihiwi maui.) In some cases the left hand was used in ritual performances, but it is not clear why it was necessary to use the right hand in some cases and in others the left hand. Now albeit the Maori tells us that the left hand or left side is 'common' and much inferior to the right yet he also states that the left hand was used ceremonially in certain cases. Thus when a teacher of the school of learning performed a final ceremony over a pupil he placed his left hand on that pupil's head as he recited the appropriate formula. An expert performed a similar act when the page 597tapu was taken off a new pa or fortified village, but in this case the subject was a young woman, whose head was so touched. A peculiar statement made by a Maori was to the effect that, when a person was about to drink water contained in a tapu vessel, he would first have a little of such water poured into his left hand, which water he then cast over his left shoulder. Evidently the fact that the left side is noa or common has some bearing on the above acts, and this peculiar gesture entered into a number of ceremonial performances. Again, when a boundary mark was set up in manner punctilious each person representing a contracting party placed his left hand on the post or stone as a certain formula was recited. When a person suspected that he was in the presence of an enemy who might be desirous of bewitching him, he would, as he rose, draw his left hand across his seat as he vacated it in order to scoop up and retain any of his hau or personality that might otherwise adhere thereto, and which might be used as a medium in sympathetic magic. When a certain expert was about to commence teaching some young men the prized lore of their elders, he took a mouthful of water, ejected it into his left hand, and then sprinkled it over the building used as a school. When the mala rakau charm was being repeated over a weapon the reciter would hold that weapon in his left hand as he scooped up some water in his right hand, and sprinkled it over the weapon. When an expert found that game birds were deserting the tribal forests, being lured away by the magic arts of a member of another tribe, he would obtain a feather of one of such birds, place it under his left foot, and recite a charm the effect of which was to prevent the birds deserting the forest.

One of the acts performed by a man in order to inherit the mana, knowledge, etc., of his father, or other elder, was to bite the big toe of the left foot of that elder just as he was about to pass into the next world. When a tohunga, shaman, was called in to treat a person suffering from a wound, or broken bones, etc., he would place his left foot on the body of the sufferer as he repeated his charms. We are told that the act empowers the charm, renders it effective, but elsewhere that the right side is that possessing mana, so that some confusion exists here.

Some curious acts were performed as relating to the left thigh. Now in Maoriland it is a very serious matter to deny the truth of any statement made by a speaker in public, more especially when it pertains to matters historical. An old maori once advised me never to say anything when affronted by such behaviour, but simply to pass my left hand under my left thigh and grasp the page 598tawhito, the organ that saves man, as I repeated a charm that would cause any evil designs entertained by the speaker to recoil upon himself. (Te utu mote whakahe i te korerotika, kaua e ki te waha; me haere te ringa maui i raw o te kuha ki te hopu i te tawhito, i te we, kia man te ringa i te tawhito; na ko te kupu tenei etc.) My informant was also good enough to give me the charm proper for such parlous occasions. When treating a sick person a shaman would obtain a piece of herb (puha), pass it round the left thigh of the invalid, and then wave it outward at arms length. The semblance of the complaint adheres as it were to the herb, and is then cast off into space. A piece of dead wood ember is sometimes added to the herb. In certain tapu -lifting ceremonial a woman was given a piece of fern-root, which she passed under her thigh, and then ate. When a man wished to influence a woman he admired, but who lived afar off, he would procure a feather and, taking it in his left hand, he passed it under his left thigh, then, holding it in his left hand, he recited a certain charm over it, and then cast it forth to be carried by the wind to the aforesaid woman. An old weaver of the Tuhoe folk informed me that, in olden times, when a woman was about to begin the weaving of a new garment, she passed the first warp thread under her thigh ere she placed it in position.

The above singular acts and beliefs connected with the left thigh are also met with in works on the peoples of Southern Asia, and also of Europe. Max Muller, in an account of Indian funeral ceremonies, describes how mourners walked three times round a tapu fire, turning their left sides to it, and striking their left thighs with their left hands. (Max Müller, Anthropological Religion pp. 257-8.) Hewitt, in his Primitive Traditional History, refers in many places to such strange acts, as, for example, when explaining certain astronomical myths at p. 620:

They gave him the dog's shoulder with the left hand, and he held it
in his left hand as he ate it, and he put the bone under his left thigh.

In Celtic mythology we find that the strength of the god Cuchulainn lay in his left thigh.

As in many other lands the owl was looked upon as a creature endowed with much sagacity, and the sound of its cry at night rendered hearers uneasy. This bird, it was believed, gave notice at the approach of a hostile raiding party, by uttering a cry rendered as "Kou! Kou! Whew! Whew! Wherol" on hearing which the people of a fortified village would look to their page 599defences and watchmen, while those dwelling in an unfortified hamlet would probably leave it and pass the night in the forest, or on the shelter of a luxuriant growth of bracken. The Tongans held a similar belief as to the night cry of the owl, also that its cry heard near a house in the afternoon betokened the fact that, ere long, there would be an increase in the family, a notification that, in New Zealand, was made by the wha or "stick insect".

It is, of course, a well known fact that our bush pigeon was originally a white bird, entirely so, but that its colour was changed by the act of Maui, who, when he assumed the form of that bird to facilitate his descent to the underworld, donned the brown apron of his mother, Taranga. So it is that the pigeon still wears the brown apron of Taranga of old, she of whom it was said "I tau a Taranga ki te maro taupaki", which records her comely aspect when clad in that becoming garment. Now, when an albino pigeon is seen in these days, then is it known that trouble lies before, that some calamity will assail the person who sees it, or a near relative of his will pass away.

Birds were also concerned with one form of the divinatory raw ceremony, in which certain sticks were set up in order to ascertain the fate of a raiding expedition. Such sticks were carefully watched, and auguries were derived from the sighting of birds on them. A singular belief concerning birds was that, if fowlers left feathers scattered about in the forest, then birds would desert that forest and move away to another district. If any birds were plucked in the forest then the feathers were carefully hidden; any stray feathers, or dead birds, seen in the forest were also concealed. Of the kaka parrot we are told that they return year after year to breed in the same hollow tree, but that when young birds are taken from such a nest the parent birds will probably desert such tree and resort to it no more. In order to prevent such a desertion it is necessary to produce some of the ashes of the fire at which the young parrots were cooked, and cast the same into the puta kaka, or parrots' nest in the hollow tree.

Of dogs we are told by the Maori that, when a dog howls, it is a sign of an abandoned home, some calamity is impending. If a dog yelps in the porch of a house then an inmate thereof will die ere long; if a dog scratches a hole in the earthen floor of a porch, or in the village plaza, then assuredly trouble lies before yet a little while and you will hear of it. If a sleeping dog is uneasy, with twitching muscles and suppressed yelps, one knows that he is pursuing game, and so it were well to take him a hunting kiwi or pigs without delay.

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We have already seen the omens of the most gloomy nature are connected with lizards, and that the mere sight of a small and harmless lizard was about the most terrifying experience that a Maori could pass through. The small green lizard, moko kakariki, was supposed to be particularly active in entering the bodies of persons foredoomed by the gods, and devouring their entrails. No fish stood higher in their favour, partially on account of the richness of flesh, and partly because they are exceedingly numerous and immense quantities of them were formerly taken. Christian, in his Caroline Islands, speaks of 'the Polynesian horror of lizards and eels', but our Maori folk of New Zealand, descendants of immigrants from Eastern Polynesia, certainly show no horror of eels. (Christian, F. W., The Caroline Islands, pp. 73, 364-5). Having remarked that the natives of Ponape have a horror of freshwater eels and will not eat them, Christian goes on to say that:

• … It seems to point to a traditional recollection of the crocodiles and venomous serpents they left behind them in the great rivers and jungles of Asia and the larger islands of Indonesia. What proves this so strongly is the fact that crocodile and snake names in New Guinea in many instances coincide with lizard and eel designations current in the dialects embracing all the isles of the Pacific.

Thus it was that the Maori dreaded to see a lizard, and should one cross a path in front of him, then he expected a grim calamity, and so we have the saying "He aua kokoti ihu waka i te moana he aitua, ko Rakaiora kokoti i te ara taua i te tuawhenua." (A herring crossing the bow of a canoe at sea is an evil portent equal to Rakaiora crossing the path of a war party on land). The intercepting of a war party by a lizard is a very serious matter, as ominous as such an act by a person would be, for it would necessitate an instantaneous killing, or a return to the village home.

The Maori had a great number of quaint beliefs concerning fish, few of which have been recorded. One of the strangest of these was that, should a fish be caught in an unusual manner, hooked by the tail or middle parts, then it was high time that the fisherman hied him to his home in order to put his domestic affairs in order, for his wife was assuredly misbehaving herself. Fishermen started out on sea fishing trips very early in the morning, and no food might be cooked or eaten by the home stayers until the fishermen returned. On the East Coast we are told that moki and warehou were formerly held to be tapu fish, and to the fishing for moki in particular many restrictions pertained. One such was that the fishermen must not mention the page 601word ahi (fire) or no fish would be caught. It was held to be most unlucky to throw any fragments of bait overboard, apart from ground bait, and some deemed it unlucky to allow a baited hook to touch the gunwale of a fishing canoe.

Concerning the strange belief about women explained above it may here be noted that J. G. Frazer has shown in his Psyche's Task that such beliefs are held in many lands, viz, that if a wife misbehaves herself while her husband is away, then some misfortune, ill luck or downright calamity will befall him. If away hunting then all game will elude him, if on a raid then he will probably be slain (J. G. Frazer, Psyche's Task, pp. 106-7). In some cases absent husbands were warned by means of dreams, and in the story of Manaia we see that the actions of a pair of birds warned him of trouble at home.